Changes

Intelligence officials, such as Obama's CIA Director [[John Brennan]] and his Director of National Intelligence [[James Clapper]], led a group of dozens of CIA operatives in issuing a public statement that disseminated an outright lie: namely, that the laptop was "Russian disinformation.” Note that this phrase contains two separate assertions: 1) the documents came from Russia and 2) they are fake ("disinformation").<ref>https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9b330000</ref>

Intelligence officials, such as Obama's CIA Director [[John Brennan]] and his Director of National Intelligence [[James Clapper]], led a group of dozens of CIA operatives in issuing a public statement that disseminated an outright lie: namely, that the laptop was "Russian disinformation.” Note that this phrase contains two separate assertions: 1) the documents came from Russia and 2) they are fake ("disinformation").<ref>https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9b330000</ref>

But the complete lack of evidence for these claims did not stop the corporate media or Big Tech from repeating this lie over and over, and, far worse, using this lie to [[censor]] the reporting from the [[internet]]. One of the first to spread this lie was, Natasha Bertrand, then of ''[[Politico]]'' and as of 2021 [[CNN]].<ref>https://greenwald.substack.com/p/cnns-new-reporter-natasha-bertrand</ref>  “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” blared her headline in ''Politico'' on October 19, 2020, just five days after the ''Post'' began its reporting.<ref>https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276</ref>  From there, virtually every media outlet<ref>https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1440402740409110528</ref> — CNN, [[NBC News]], [[PBS]], ''[[Huffington Post]]'', ''The Intercept'',<ref>https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1440315750082748419</ref> and too many others to count<ref>https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1440314701896814597</ref> — began completely ignoring the substance of the reporting and instead spread the lie over and over that these documents were the by-product of Russian disinformation.<ref>https://greenwald.substack.com/p/new-proof-emerges-of-the-biden-family</ref>

But the complete lack of evidence for these claims did not stop the corporate media or Big Tech from repeating this lie over and over, and, far worse, using this lie to [[censor]] the reporting from the [[internet]]. One of the first to spread this lie was, Natasha Bertrand, then of ''[[Politico]]'' and as of 2021 [[CNN]].<ref>https://greenwald.substack.com/p/cnns-new-reporter-natasha-bertrand</ref>  “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” blared her headline in ''Politico'' on October 19, 2020, just five days after the ''Post'' began its reporting.<ref>https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276</ref>  From there, virtually every media outlet<ref>https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1440402740409110528</ref> — CNN, [[NBC News]], [[PBS]], ''[[Huffington Post]]'', ''[[The Intercept]]'',<ref>https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1440315750082748419</ref> and too many others to count<ref>https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1440314701896814597</ref> — began completely ignoring the substance of the reporting and instead spread the lie over and over that these documents were the by-product of Russian disinformation.<ref>https://greenwald.substack.com/p/new-proof-emerges-of-the-biden-family</ref>

==21st Century==

==21st Century==